Trump: Drug dealers deserve death penalty
Threat comes in push against opioid addiction
WASHINGTON – President Trump renewed his call for the death penalty for drug traffickers Monday, saying he wants to emulate countries with “no tolerance” policies that execute drug dealers.
“We can have all the blue-ribbon committees we want, but if we don’t get tough on drug dealers, we’re wasting our time,” he said in New Hampshire, a state whose overdose rate is twice the national average. “And that toughness includes the death penalty.”
He did not give specifics about how his administration would enforce the death penalty, but White House counselor Kellyanne Conway told reporters on Air Force One that the death penalty would apply to “very specific high-level cases.” And domestic policy adviser Andrew Bremberg told reporters Sunday that the Trump administration would pursue capital punishment “where it’s appropriate under current law.”
Current law allows the death penalty for drug-related cases, usually when they involve a murder by drive-by shooting, with a firearm offense or of a police officer.
But there are also drug kingpin provisions that allow the death penalty for traffickers who generate more than $20 million in drug sales. It’s unclear whether those provisions are constitutional, however, after a 2008 Supreme Court decision that struck down the death penalty in cases where “the crime did not result, and was not intended to result, in the victim’s death.”
That case, Kentucky vs. Louisiana, applied to child rape and other crimes against people. The Supreme Court left open the question of whether the death penalty could constitutionally apply to crimes against the state, like drug-kingpin activity.
Even so, the federal death penalty is rarely carried out, and questions about the use of drugs used for lethal injections have slowed executions national- ly. There are 61 federal convicts on death row — about one-fifth of them convicted of a drug-related murder — but the last federal execution happened 15 years ago Sunday.
Trump argued that traffickers are killing people with powerful synthetic opioids just as if they shot them with a gun. “Some of these drug dealers will kill thousands of people in their lifetimes and destroy the lives of many more people than that,” he said.
Over the past several weeks, Trump has talked approvingly of regimes in China, the Philippines and Singapore that execute drug dealers — in some cases without due process. “Take a look at some of these countries where they don’t play games,” he said. “They don’t have a drug problem.”
In his speech Monday in Manchester, N.H., Trump pledged to support reduced overprescription of opioids and research of less addictive painkillers. And he suggested the federal government may join state attorneys general in suing drug companies found to have used deceptive sales practices to push addictive medicines.
“Whether you are a dealer or doctor or trafficker or manufacturer and you break the law and peddle these deadly poisons, we will find you, we will charge you and we will hold you accountable,” he said. “We have got to get tough. This isn’t about nice anymore.”